World News - Inside the Shadow Economy America Relies On Many Industries Depend on Undocumented Workers

It is a shadow economy, brought to life every morning as the sun comes up in cities and towns across America.The scene occurs daily in places from South Florida, where trucks and buses carry illegal immigrants to work in the fields, to Duplin County, N.C., where immigrants report to work on farms, to the hardened street corners of Newark, N.J., where undocumented workers wait to be hired. Jose, an immigrant from Ecuador, told ABC News he came to America with his brother to look for work. He's stood on a Newark street corner every morning for nearly seven years now.As he talked with ABC News, a van pulled up and, like the workers inside, Jose was off to work. It was just one van out of many that pulled into the neighborhood where undocumented workers scramble for construction jobs daily.... http://abcnews.go.com

Police arrested a man Thursday in the gruesome killing of six relatives in his grandmother's home, where four of the bodies were found wrapped in blankets in the basement, and blood, bone fragments and a hammer were discovered upstairs, authorities said. Jesse Wise, whose grandparents owned the home, was charged with six counts of homicide, police said. The victims were killed last weekend and apparently died of multiple traumatic injuries, police said. According to a search warrant affidavit, at least one had an obvious head wound. Wise's 64-year-old grandmother, Emily Wise, two of her daughters and two of her grandchildren, ages 5 and 19, were identified as the victims, said East Lampeter Township police Chief John Bowman. ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5753395,00.html

Judges began checking tens of thousands of contested ballots Thursday, as Italian politics was thrown into turmoil after Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s demand for a recount of rival Romano Prodi’s narrow parliamentary election victory.Official returns gave Prodi’s center-left coalition the majority in both houses of parliament in the April 9-10 elections — but the margin was a mere 25,000 votes in lower Chamber of Deputies.One Italian newspaper even compared the scenario to the disputed balloting in Florida during the U.S. presidential race in 2000. 'We are serene,' Prodi saysProdi insisted Thursday that his victory is safe.“There is nothing to worry about; we are serene,” he said in Bologna, according to Italy’s ANSA and Apcom news agencies.Berlusconi has refused to concede, saying late Wednesday that the margin of victory was slim enough to require “a scrupulous check to ascertain any possible error or irregularity.”...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12229641/from/RSS/

Pakistani troops deployed Thursday to the streets of Karachi to curb rioting and vandalism that flared in this southern city for a third day following a suicide bombing that killed 57 people at a Sunni Muslim prayer service. The deployments, the first here since Shiite-Sunni unrest in the early 1990s, took place hours before mass funerals were expected for three leaders of the moderate Sunni Tehrik group who were among those killed in Tuesday's attack, one of Pakistan's deadliest ever. "We are deploying troops in the city at sensitive places and if needed the troops will help the civil administration in maintenance of peace and order," said Col. Idrees Malik, a Pakistan army spokesman in Karachi. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz flew to Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, and met with Sunni leaders and security officials in a bid to calm seething tensions and restore security. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/13/world/main1496212.shtml?source=RSS&attr=World_1496212

North Korea threatened Thursday to use a delay in international nuclear disarmament talks to bolster its military "deterrent force," a phrase it often uses to refer to its purported atomic weapons. North Korea has said it has nuclear weapons, although the claim has not been verified independently. "It's not bad that the resumption of nuclear talks is delayed. During that period, we will make more deterrent force," the North's top nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, told a news conference. "We will react in an ultra hard-line manner if the United States continues to apply pressure and sanctions. We will never yield to pressure," Kim said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1838850

A couple accused of falsely claiming they were the new parents of sextuplets apologized Wednesday for scheming to tap into their neighbors' generosity."We're sorry for everything we did," Sarah Everson said from the driveway of their home. Her husband, Kris Everson, vowed to pay back those who sent money or other items."We didn't mean to hurt anybody," he said. "We did it out of financial reasons."The couple could face criminal charges for collecting cash and other gifts after making public their story of six newborn babies clinging to life. Police were still investigating how much money and other help the couple received.Police Chief Aaron Ambrose said detectives would seek records on donations made through a bank fund set up for the Eversons, a post office box established to receive mailed gifts and an online PayPal account that allowed visitors to the couple's Web site to give money....http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/13/sextuplet.scam.ap/index.html?section=cnn_us